U.S. Veterans Use Greek Tragedy to Tell Us About War

U.S. veterans read the words of the Greek hero Ajax and his wife, Tecmessa, as he contemplates suicide.Published OnMay 26, 2017

The ancient Greeks didn’t go to the theater just to be entertained. Aristotle believed that audiences saw themselves reflected in tragic characters and that the very act of watching a character’s downfall helped purge them of emotions like pity and fear, a process he called catharsis or, roughly, “purification.”

More than 2,500 years later, a young classics major named Bryan Doerries wondered whether he could help a growing and vulnerable population in need of catharsis: veterans of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom come home from combat with depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts.

His idea became a project he calls Theater of War, which has now staged more than 400 performances for veterans across the country. He asked high-profile actors, including Adam Driver, Frances McDormand and David Strathairn, to read from the war plays of Sophocles. After the reading, the veterans in the audience talk about their own trauma and their trouble readjusting to civilian life.

The project has attracted thousands of veterans and their families as they try to readjust to life away from the battlefield. It isn’t an easy process.

“You create a permissive enough environment where people can speak truth,” Mr. Doerries said. “The Greeks have a word which means ‘balanced-mindedness,’ which was the ideal of the fifth century. So how do you rebalance the mind of an Athenian? Part of the answer is to give them the opportunity to vent and purge these emotions that can’t be bottled up.”

Inspired by the example of Theater of War, we have created our own version of Sophocles’ poetry. We asked a dozen or so veterans to read passages from two of his war plays and to talk about what the passages meant to them. We turned their readings and their comments into two videos — one about a soldier’s suicide and the other about living with injury.

Video

U.S. veterans read the words of the Greek warrior Philoctetes after he is wounded and abandoned by his comrades.Published OnMay 26, 2017

One, called “A Warrior’s Last Words,” is adapted from the play “Ajax” and shows Ajax and his wife, Tecmessa, as he contemplates suicide. The other video, “If Men Don’t Know My Story,” is a speech from the play “Philoctetes” (pronounced fill-ock-TEE-tees), in which a badly wounded soldier describes how the generals abandoned him on an island for nine years.

So instead of getting insights into themselves by listening to Greek poetry, these veterans are using the poetry to give us insight into their own experience.

“The first time I heard Ajax’s speech, it knocked me back in my chair,” said Jeff Hall, a retired Army commander from Oklahoma who struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts after returning from Iraq. “It was me. I could see how he was betrayed in the text.”

Mr. Hall’s wife, Sheri, is the voice of Tecmessa in the video — the long-suffering spouse of Ajax, who lives in fear of her husband’s dark thoughts.

“She was walking around on eggshells and so were we during our time of Jeff’s PTSD onset, and the things going on with his anger and his depression,” she said. “It really spoke to me, especially with what she was dealing with. I was going through the same things.”

While Sophocles is better remembered for writing “Antigone” and “Oedipus Rex,” he was also a general in the Athenian Army and lived during the decades-long Peloponnesian War. He wrote “Ajax” and “Philoctetes” for audiences that most likely included his army’s own soldiers.

Theater directors typically look for new material or new venues. Mr. Doerries has made a specialty of seeking out new audiences for ancient texts. He mounted a reading of the Book of Job for people affected by Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina and the Fukushima nuclear accident and has done versions of “Prometheus Bound” for prison guards, including those at Guantánamo Bay.

Gregory Gadson, a retired Army colonel who fought in the gulf war of 1991, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, is one beneficiary of Theater of War. In 2007, he lost both his legs above the knee from a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad. In our project, he reads the part of Philoctetes, the wounded soldier who is abandoned on an island by his army.

“On the surface, it sounds very simple,” said Mr. Gadson, who stayed on active duty after the bombing. “But it’s very deep, and having lived 50 years of my life, it’s very relevant today. It touches my soul.”

Many of the veterans who participated came from a military family, often going back generations. Jack Eubanks, who reads “Philoctetes,” comes from a long line of soldiers and is distantly related to George Washington. He was injured twice in Iraq and once in Afghanistan, and spent more than three years recovering from his brain injuries, relearning to talk, read and walk.

Not all their wounds are physical. Jenny Pacanowski, who contributed to “If Men Don’t Know My Story,” said that the plays resonate with veterans still because Sophocles shows the pain of soldiers trying to balance their anger at the generals with their shame at failing to live up to their fathers’ examples.

“My father had me in boxing and kickboxing when I was 9. So he was raising a warrior,” said Ms. Pacanowski, whose father was a Marine.

“I can feel it in my chest,” she said about Sophocles’ insight. “It’s real for us.”

The Veterans

J C Bravo joined the Marines at age 19, then enlisted in the Army as an officer in 1999, serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He continues to be on active duty. He works for a Department of Defense contractor and volunteers with the Wounded Warrior Project.

Brandon Caro joined the Navy as a combat medic in 2004, serving one deployment in Afghanistan. He is the author of the novel “Old Silk Road,” which was nominated for the 2015 Indie Fab Award, and a co-author (with Carl Higbie) of the memoir “Enemies, Foreign and Domestic.” Also a songwriter, he lives in Kiev, Ukraine.

Maurice Decaul joined the Marines (“out of Flatbush, Brooklyn”) in 1997, serving in the Fleet Marine Force from 1998 to 2002, then a tour of Iraq with the Marine reserves in 2003. He is a graduate student at Brown University studying playwriting, and he runs the Veterans and Theater Institute, which creates theater opportunities for veterans.

Norman Easy joined the Army in 1985 and served in the New York Army National Guard for 28 years, including two tours of duty in Iraq. He retired as a lieutenant colonel and now works as the director of procurement for a global health care organization and is the chairman of its veterans network.

Jack Eubanks signed up for the Marines while still in high school in Atlanta. He did three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, and was seriously wounded three times. After a three-year recovery from brain trauma, he attended Vassar College, graduating with a degree in drama in 2016. He is pursuing a graduate degree in creative writing from the New School in New York.

Gregory Gadson is a retired colonel with a 26-year career in the United States Army. He served in the first gulf war, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He remained on active duty after an I.E.D. explosion caused him to lose both legs above the knee and the full use of his right arm. He holds master’s degrees from Webster University and Georgetown and is an entrepreneur, speaker and accomplished photographer.

Joseph Geraci joined the Army in 1998 after graduating from West Point. He did three tours of duty in Afghanistan, including one as a company commander. He is the director of military relations at Teachers College, Columbia University, which conducts applied research to help veterans make the transition to civilian life. He is still an active-duty infantry battalion commander.

Jeff Hall works as an artist on the farm where he lives near Mooreland, Okla. He joined the Army in 1988 in the Field Artillery Branch and served for 23 years, retiring as a major. He had two tours in Iraq, from 2003 to 2004 and from 2005 to 2006.

Sheri Hall, wife of Jeff Hall, was a military spouse for 23 years. She and Jeff work for soldiers and veterans through the Real Warriors Campaign and provide sanctuary for veterans on their farm.

Zach Iscol is the executive director of the Headstrong project, a nonprofit provider of mental-health care for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. He served for seven years in the Marine Corps, including two tours of duty in Iraq.

Phil Klay is the author of “Redeployment,” a collection of short stories that won the 2014 National Book Award for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for best first book in any genre. He joined the Marine Corps in 2005 and served for four years, including a tour in Iraq.

Jenny Pacanowski joined the Army in 2003, serving a tour of duty in Iraq. As well as being a poet, performer and public speaker on veterans’ issues, she is the associate director of Impact Theater: The Veterans Project, which brings civilians and veterans together onstage, and the artistic liaison of the One Fight Foundation, which is dedicated to reducing suicide among veterans.

Rudy Reyes joined the Marines in 1998, serving three combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and working as a counterterrorism contractor in Africa for the Department of Defense. He is an actor and a co-founder of Force Blue, a nonprofit that enables veterans to use their skills on environmental projects focusing on ocean conservation. He played himself in the 2008 HBO mini-series “Generation Kill.”

Loree Sutton is a retired Army brigadier general and the commissioner of the New York City Department of Veterans’ Services. She was commissioned for active duty in 1985, just after her graduation from medical school, and she served in Egypt and in Iraq during the first gulf war. She was promoted to brigadier general in 2007 and was the founding director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury.

Where to Get Help

The Department of Veterans Affairs maintains a hotline for veterans in crisis that operates 24 hours a day. Call 800-273-8255 and press 1. Online, go to veteranscrisisline.net/chat, or send a text message to 838255. You can also contact the Headstrong project, which provides cost-free support for veterans, at getheadstrong.org.